What Does Exodus 36:15 Mean?
The length of one curtain was thirty forearms, and four forearms was the breadth of one curtain; the eleven curtains were of one size.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The length of one curtain was thirty cubits, and four cubits was the breadth of one curtain: the eleven curtains were of one size.THE KEY
Unity begins in a measure shared by separate pieces.
THE MEANING
Each curtain has a defined length and breadth, and all eleven share one measure. The sacred covering takes shape through repeated proportion across separate pieces. Each curtain keeps its own dimensions while belonging to one set.
THE ROOT
מִדָּה
middah
GROWS FROM
מדד
To measure or measure off.
“size” in this verse is middah. The Hebrew phrase מִדָּה אַחַת (middah achat, “one measure”) makes the shared proportion explicit. The common dimension is designed sameness, not an accidental resemblance.
ALSO GROWS
madad: To measure.
מָדַד
The verb names the act behind the shared dimensions assigned to every curtain.
middah: Measure, size, or dimension.
מִדָּה
This noun names the common measure that holds the eleven curtains to one proportion.
רֹחַב
roḥav
GROWS FROM
רחב
To be wide or spacious.
English presents breadth as a technical dimension; Hebrew keeps it in a word family that also names widening and open space. The measured width carries that spatial resonance without ceasing to be a literal measurement.
ALSO GROWS
raḥav: Wide or broad.
רָחָב
It names the quality measured by the curtain’s breadth.
merḥav: A broad or open place.
מֶרְחָב
This related word extends the same root from a measured width to spacious room.
THE PATTERN
Separate pieces can share one pattern and become one coherent dwelling.
And you shall make fifty taches of gold, and join the curtains together with the taches; and it shall be one dwelling.For as the body is one, and has many limbs, and all the limbs of the body, though many, are one body, so also is the Anointed One.In whom the whole building, joined at the joints, grows into a set-apart temple in the Lord.THE THREAD
He brings me out into a broad place; he pulls me loose, because he delights in me.“Large place” translates מֶרְחָב (merḥav), from the same רחב root as the curtain’s “breadth.” Exodus gives that root a measured dimension; the psalm uses it for spacious room.
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